Tyro

Beginner, novice (n.)

[under construction]

Tyrone stood up in the boat and gazed out over the clear Mediterranean when he heard a dull thud and a grown from behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw his father laying on the deck of the small ship with his knees to his chest, shaking. There was a pool of blood beneath his face, growing slowly from a small drip that was dripping from his nose. Tyrone didn't say anything. He ran to his old father and gathered the white-haired main into his arms.
The sun was beginning to set beneath the ocean and a piercing orange light painted them and cast its hue over the entirety of the coast of their native Carthage.
Tyrone didn't frantically set the sails east for the coast as he had done the first time his father had fallen during his lessons in abalone hunting. It was his father's wish to sail out again despite his illness, to continue Tyrone's training--for Tyrone was supposed to inherit his father's business and his reputation. Tyrone's father's hands floated up and touched his young son's face. They were deeply stained with purple dye, the color of their trade. Tyrone had never seen the real flesh color of those hands.
Tyrone had insisted on his father staying home, but these trips were all they had. His mother died in childbirth, and his father wed himself to his work and Tyrone's upbringing in her absence. Tyrone, only a 14-year-old boy, would need to become a man quickly now.
The old man brought his hands down from his sons face, leaving a purple hand print there, and he touched the rivulet of blood trickling from his nostrils. The dye on his fingers mixed with the blood, the red and purple making a deep shade of violet below his nose and his finger tips.
"Father," said Tyrone, beginning to cry, "you can't leave me, I'm only just beginning."